"Home values can certainly rise faster than your income. And the problem is you pay your property taxes out of your income, and you may get into a situation where you simply can't afford to stay in your home and pay the property taxes," says Dr. Walden, a North Carolina Cooperative Extension specialist.

"Now, North Carolina recognizes this can be a problem for low-income households and for disabled households. And in fact North Carolina has a program specifically to address this issue for those kinds of households," Walden adds. "But they don't have a general program to address it for everyone.

"There has been some discussion of perhaps postponing property taxes on some households (that) are in a particular kind of tight bind," he says. "This would be were you would not pay the property taxes now, but you would postpone and pay them later when you voluntarily sold your home.

"There's also talk in some counties perhaps of shifting away from the property tax to other kinds of taxes like sales taxes. But, of course, this would simply mean shifting the burden from one form to another. But this is certainly an issue in fast-growing areas of our state."